Trip, Teeth, Tears, Toddling, Time...

We’re fresh off a holiday to South Wales with Chris’ folks and I feel much refreshed for it. The end of April was a fun but busy muddle and it was invigorating to step away from daily life and into the undulating serenity of the Welsh coast. We stayed in a self catering cottage near to Llansteffan, which lacked both mobile phone reception and Internet access (shock, horror fellow bloggers!).

It was actually pretty refreshing to switch off from all online activity and chill, potter, read, explore the beautiful area and enjoy each other’s company away from every day stresses. The cottage where we stayed was very clean and well maintained, so if you are considering a venture to this part of the world let me know and I’ll pass on the details.

Aside from relaxing, here’s what we got up to:

Discovery
This part of the Welsh Coast is full little gems and following Easter and April bank holiday madness it was fairly un-crowded. Some of my highlights included a cliff/cave walk from Wiseman’s Bridge to Saundersfoot, walking with LLC in the water along the beach at Tenby (a delightful town full of mostly non-chain shops) and climbing up the ruins of the castle at Dinefwr. Llansteffan beach had a pokey looking fish & chin van that produced the finest of chips (when it was open), and there was a sheltered children’s playground with a unique see-saw-esque structure that I really enjoyed (picture to come). One evening Chris and I took a walk along Llangsteffan Beach around to Scott’s Bay. Overlooked by the mighty ruins of Llansteffan Castle and edged by deceptively serene mud flats for as far as the eye could see, this part of the beach remained hidden from the ocean and an all encompassing whooshing sound, similar to that you get when putting a sea-shell to your ear, were our only signs of the nearby sea. Magical.

Teeth & Tears
LLC’s first bottom right molar popped through right after we arrived in Wales, but by mid-week she had three more teeth cutting through her gums. We’ve been really lucky to date with teething but as multiple larger teeth made their entrance LLC clearly felt the rub. She kept sucking on her finger, drooling a bit and crying. She wasn’t herself and was clearly in pain. I had a little tube of Dentinox in my handy dandy bag of baby lotions and potions, but this wasn’t really doing the trick. In the end I visited a pharmacy in Tenby where they suggested I try Ashton & Parson’s teething powder. I had a few friends mention this is the past so we tried it and that, along with some cold cucumber and much loving from all parents and grandparents gradually did the trick.

Toddling
Since my last post about knee walking, LLC has been feet walking more and more, but still regularly speeding around on her knees. This changed when we arrived in Wales. Like the flick of a switch, she started more regularly toddling around and for the first time, seemed to suss that she could move just as quickly on her feet as on her knees. I took this moment to take her to a local children’s shoe store to have her fitted for shoes (when we went about 2 months ago her feet were only size 1 and too small for all the Clarks and Start-Rite shoes.) It transpired though her feet have grown, they are still too small for most of the shoes on the market. Has anyone else had this problem? If you have any suggestions of where I can source small shoes (or should I just wait) that would be great!

Time
Well they say time flies when you are having fun – in the midst of this all I officially joined the 30 club!